In the late 1800s Emil (or Emile) J. Bein seems to have been an employee at the Tucker File Co., a maker of file boxes and related office supplies, when he patented a vertical belt sander. His design was one of the earlier belt sanders. By 1906 he seems to have left Tucker and started his own company, Adamite Surface Machine Co., to manufacture his sanding machines. At some point the name changed to Peerless Surface Machine Co.

There was also a Peerless Surfacing Machine Co. of Troy, NY, that made sanders. The obvious inference would be that Bein bought the Troy company, and applied the Peerless name to his original company. But the Troy company is known to have been acquired in the 1920s by Production Machine Co. and moved to Greenfield, Mass. More information is needed to resolve the discrepancy.

Information Sources

• We first became aware of this company from a Photo Index posting by Arthur Fuege. Arthur's machine is labeled,

  PEERLESS
  SURFACE MACHINE CO.
  E. J. BEIN
  PAT JAN 25 10 NEWARK, N.J.

  The patent date corresponds to patent 947,491, granted to Emile J. Bein. That patent, which was not explicitly assigned, was an improvement to an earlier patent that was assigned to the Adamite Surface Machine Co.
• Patent records provide Emile Julius Bein's full name, the name of the Tucker and Adamite companies, and the dates of when Bein was actively improving his sander design. All patents before 1900 gave Bein's first name as Emil, and patents after that date gave it as Emile.
• A web search on Emil(e) J. Bein failed to turn up any additional information. Searches on Adamite Suface Machine Co. and Peerless Surface Machine Co. also failed to turn up any new information.